5 Reasons For Investing In Foreign Real Estate

The Current Opportunity Is Historic For These Five Reasons

I’ve been researching and reporting on opportunities for investing in foreign real estate for 30 years. I made my first overseas property purchase in 1994 and have made dozens of buys since in a total of 22 countries.

Here’s the point for you: I’m more bullish on the potential of foreign real estate as an investment and more excited about current available opportunities than I’ve ever been for five reasons:

The U.S. dollar is soaring…

Key markets are in distress… meaning, in some markets, absurdly undervalued property prices…

More turn-key opportunities are available than ever… in some cases, making a foreign property investment can be almost as easy as calling your broker and buying a stock… and that’s a statement I would not have imagined being able to make even a year ago…

More developers than ever are offering financing terms… because they realize it’s the only way they’ll make the sales they need to make…

It’s easier than ever to vet, execute, and manage a property purchase in another country… even a few years ago, it was more challenging and more expensive to create the infrastructure required to support owning and investing in foreign real estate…

Starting in mid-2014, the U.S. dollar began to spike. Today it is at its highest point against many world currencies in a decade and longer… creating bargains of historic proportions.

As I write, properties in Brazil, for example, are trading for 60% less than they were five years ago.

In Colombia the currency discount is 41%… in Chile, one of the world’s strongest-performing countries, it’s an amazing 33%. Mexico is now trading at 30% off, making this country’s beautiful beaches more affordable than they’ve been in a very long time.

In Europe, the currency discount is now standing at 24%, bringing the sun-washed coasts of Portugal and Spain into affordable, even bargain territory.

Here are a few real-world examples:

In Medellín’s upscale El Poblado sector, a two-bedroom, two-bath condo is on offer for 460 million pesos. That’s US$157,000 at today’s exchange rates. An apartment of this value would have cost US$249,000 just last year… and US$261,000 in 2013.

That’s a discount of more than US$104,000 compared with two years ago.

A similar two-bedroom, two-bath apartment in the sought-after Providencia district of Santiago, Chile, is listed for 155 million pesos. At today’s exchange rate, that asking price is US$225,300. Just last year, an apartment of this value in this market would have cost US$292,000. That translates to an amazing US$66,700 currency discount in just a year.

A classy apartment in Fortaleza, Brazil’s, popular Aldeota residential sector is selling today for the equivalent of US$133,000. This is US$202,000 less than an apartment of this value would have cost in 2010.

Interested in coastal Europe? In Lagos, Portugal, an attractive two-bedroom apartment is on offer for 230,000 euros. That’s just US$255,500 at today’s exchange rate. A year ago, this would have been US$319,400… almost US$70,000 more.

I am in the process of closing on a two-bedroom apartment in Lagos for 99,500 euros… or about US$112,000.

Take a minute to process that. Just slightly more than US$100,000 for a two-bedroom apartment on a cobblestoned street one block back from the central waterfront square in a charming and historic city with great dining, great wine, great views…

It was an extraordinary find but not a one-off.

This opportunity is too big to ignore if you’ve even been considering a property purchase overseas.

How long will this discount continue? I couldn’t say and neither could anyone else.

Indeed, over the past few weeks, the dollar has been backing away from its highs in many markets, meaning the discounts are already beginning to erode in some cases.

That could change. The dollar could turn around, regain its upward momentum, and push even higher. There is no guarantee that today’s prices are the best we’ll see. However, I don’t recommend waiting to find out. The benefits of seizing today’s discounts and opportunities outweigh the risks associated with waiting to see if exchange rates become even more favorable.

If you’ve even been toying with the idea of maybe… someday… down the road… possibly buying a piece of real estate abroad, either for investment or for personal use, then you should be paying attention right now. I’ll say it one more time:

The current opportunity is historic.

Kathleen Peddicord

P.S. The current opportunity is something else, as well.

It is also, in cases, unprecedentedly turn-key.

For the entirety of my global property investing career, the Holy Grail has been to find a way to buy foreign real estate that could compete with the ease of buying a stock. Even a year ago, I wouldn’t have suggested that it’d ever be possible. Buying property overseas isn’t the same as investing in the stock market, I’ve reminded you often.

That’s no longer necessarily the case. We have identified a number of opportunities to begin building a global property portfolio that are remarkably hassle-free.

All of these opportunities will be participating in our third-annual Global Property Summit taking place March 14–16, 2016, in Panama City, Panama. In total, over these three days, we’ll be showcasing 14 markets and 20 different current offers, some of which you can get in on with as little as US$17,000 or less.

No other global property event compares.

Registration for our 2016 Global Property Summit opens today. 50 VIP places are available… and the first 25 VIP attendees will be invited to participate in a private property viewing tour in Panama City with Lief Simon.

Kathleen Peddicord has covered the live, retire, and do business overseas beat for more than 30 years and is considered the world's foremost authority on these subjects. She has traveled to more than 75 countries, invested in real estate in 21, established businesses in 7, renovated historic properties in 6, and educated her children in 4.

Kathleen has moved children, staff, enterprises, household goods, and pets across three continents, from the East Coast of the United States to Waterford, Ireland... then to Paris, France... next to Panama City, where she has based her Live and Invest Overseas business. Most recently, Kathleen and her husband Lief Simon are dividing their time between Panama and Paris.

Kathleen was a partner with Agora Publishing’s International Living group for 23 years. In that capacity, she opened her first office overseas, in Waterford, Ireland, where she managed a staff of up to 30 employees for more than 10 years. Kathleen also opened, staffed, and operated International Living publishing and real estate marketing offices in Panama City, Panama; Granada, Nicaragua; Roatan, Honduras; San Miguel de Allende, Mexico; Quito, Ecuador; and Paris, France.

Kathleen moved on from her role with Agora in 2007 and launched her Live and Invest Overseas group in 2008. In the years since, she has built Live and Invest Overseas into a successful, recognized, and respected multi-million-dollar business that employs a staff of 35 in Panama City and dozens of writers and other resources around the world.

Kathleen has been quoted by The New York Times, Money magazine, MSNBC, Yahoo Finance, the AARP, and beyond. She has appeared often on radio and television (including Bloomberg and CNBC) and speaks regularly on topics to do with living, retiring, investing, and doing business around the world.

In addition to her own daily e-letter, the Overseas Opportunity Letter, with a circulation of more than 300,000 readers, Kathleen writes regularly for U.S. News & World Report and Forbes.